Living on less (No Spend November)
If you know me, you know I love a good challenge.
They are super fun for me. So what better way to start the month than with a spending challenge. Or rather, a non spending challenge 😁. Every good challenge has a good reward. Well, this one has an excellent reward. Think about it! It’s right before the holidays, so yet another way to save up for the holiday season! So there is our incentive right there.
This month let us only spend money on the essentials. I know the holidays are rapidly approaching. So why not make this a fun opportunity to save up some money and stay as far away from debt as possible this coming holiday season. So first, let’s make a list of the absolute essentials the we cannot go without (i.e., food, shelter, utilities, etc.). I know that some of us celebrate Thanksgiving or other holidays this month. I still encourage you to join in on this challenge because a) Thanksgiving is at the end of the month so even if we do 3 weeks no spend challenge is better than zero. And b) if we plan this out carefully Thanksgiving (or another holiday) could even be included with our food budget if needed. Let’s just be sure not to have a lavish grocery budget. Otherwise, it might undermine all the hard work we would have put in, and we certainly don’t want that!
Even with a great incentive like that, I still like to help make things as fun and easy as possible. In order to do that we are going to find practical ways to help us live one less. Here is a practical list you can use to get you started.
Practical ways to live on less
Use what you already have - Who needs to spend money when we already got so many free stuff inside our homes? Let us make use of the things that we already have. This applies to everything from shoes, to purses, to the plates in our kitchens. If we have it but don’t use it, then we need to donate it. That will help us make room for the new things that will come (after the no spend month is over). While at the same time help someone else enjoy these items now. Win-win!
Become a fancy (at home) restaurant - With all these free online resources we all can be Stellar Home Cook Ristorante ( I totally just made that up but sounds super legit right lol). Let’s use our pantries, fridge, freezer, fruits and vegetables. Anything and everything we have accessible to us. Let’s challenge ourselves to extremely lower our grocery bill by using resources such as https://www.supercook.com/ . To make meals with the things we already have at home. I have shared with you How to significantly lower your grocery bill here: https://www.buildsherhome.com/blog/7-easy-ways-to-save-money-on-groceries . Combined with these, your grocery bill will be unbelievable (in a good way)
Be a DIY diva - let’s DIY anything and everything we can. From lotions, to shampoos, to body washes and soaps, these days we really can DIY it all. Resources like Pinterest and YouTube have loads of easy to follow recipes that we can make from things that we most likely have at home. Or if not the ingredients are a fraction of the cost of what we would have paid for a store-bought product. Not to mention we can fully control which ingredients go in and which chemicals do not.
Stich up those socks - Usually when things get worn out I am fine with retiring (aka recycling) them and replacing them with something new (one in one out rule). However, not this month. This month we will hem up those handkerchiefs, stich up those socks, and patch up those pants! Don’t get rid of the items just yet! Let’s see what we can do to cause them to hang on just a few more weeks until this challenge is over (not wearing the item counts BTW!) Whatever we have to do to not spend an extra penny this month. It’ll be over before we know it!
Stop (or pause ) those subscriptions - This one can be super challenging but I promise it’s temporary. Let’s check what subscriptions we have and either pause, skip or stop them. It’s only for this one month! This can save us anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars, so please do not skip it! And hey, who knows, we may even find a subscription we have been paying for that we don’t even use anymore. Either way, it will be well worth it.
In order for this list or anything else to work, we have to learn to be content with what we already have. If we are already content with what we have, then it does not matter if we do this challenge for one month, or one year. If we have the right mind set then we know that what we have is a blessing and we don’t need to go rush to buy anything. While the opposite is also true. If we are not content with what we already have, we may wish to run out and buy everything in sight and then some. For some ways on how to be content check out this blog post i wrote regarding that: https://www.buildsherhome.com/blog/be-content-always
I’m sure there are many other ways for us to live on less this month. But these 5 ways should help us to get started. Feel free to include more as we go throughout the month. I know we got this and it’s going to be so much fun to see how much we saved at the end of the month!
